There’s this thing on TikTok called “Asmr”: it’s a set of sounds and actions that, if performed, induce a state of mental relaxation in the viewer, even if at a distance. There are, for example, influencers who whisper words softly next to a microphone, thus helping users fall asleep, or others, like NewMartina, who shatter objects into a thousand pieces thus arousing a sense of unconscious satisfaction. It’s something that has to do with the sensory stimuli that pass through the phone, in short, nothing particularly shocking. Yet what has struck me these days are some videos in which the ones riding the wave of Asmr are osteopaths, that is, health professionals who, equipped with microphones well positioned near the patient’s neck, put on a real show on the noise made by the joints. Hundreds of thousands of videos in which the discipline is sensationalized, perhaps under the pretext of dissemination and certainly with a great return of publicity for their studies.

What is Osteopathy and the Controversy of Andrea Vianello

First of all, what is osteopathy? Classified by the WHO as complementary and alternative medicine (i.e. not as traditional medicine, a bit like naturopathy, Ayurveda and others), it is a therapy that focuses on the musculoskeletal system, proceeding through the manipulation of areas of the patient’s body. And it has gone viral in recent days due to a controversy raised by the journalist Andrea Vianello, who denounced as dangerous a “move” made by an osteopath on Rai Uno, igniting the debate. What interests us here, however, is not so much the scientific aspect of the story (which we have explored here and here with scientific opinions), but the phenomenon that broke out on TikTok, between “very crispy backs” and even sexual drifts.

The “very crispy backs” and the microphones behind the butt

Let’s take a step back: ASMR has been around for quite some time now. There was a time, for example, when “food influencers” would hold a microphone close to fried food to emphasize the crispy sound and thus sell their content. Today, however, we could find that same microphone behind our butt, behind our neck, resting on our breasts (with our consent of course, but so be it). It’s the magical world where osteopathy and ASMR meet. “Marta had a car crash, she did some tests and nothing came out, so let’s do a postural check,” the osteopath begins in the typical video. “Where do you feel pain?”, he asks her, and then, after a few pleasantries, he begins to massage. “There will be a beautiful symphony,” he warns. And so the show begins, with the microphone positioned exactly at the point where the joint will be “cracked”, so as to amplify the echo. “Holy shit,” exclaims the videographer holding the camera, in the face of a “crackling” that is too loud. Views soar, some videos reach millions of clicks.

Jaw unlocking, lumbar-sacral massages, hands that press on every point. Why do these videos relax us? Beyond the noise itself, it is particularly enjoyable for the unconscious to observe how a simple maneuver can resolve in a flash a pain that perhaps has been with us for a long time, at least according to perception. The “scrocchi” however are also scary. “But of what?”, the osteopath reassures, “I play you and you sing, listen to my solo”. At the bottom of the videos, hashtags useful for virality. Participating in the videos themselves, often also very famous influencers arrive, for a real exchange of visibility with other osteopath-star. Often the protagonists are also newborns, at least for the pediatric osteopathy trend: also in this case, children generate particular empathy and work well to increase views.

The sexual drift

The sexual drift obviously comes when the pain affects the lumbar-sacral area. It can happen – and what a coincidence! – that the patients are particularly attractive girls, with prominent “butts” or ample breasts. The comments on the videos, in this case, are wasted. “In this case, who pays for whom?”, provokes a user. The professionals with more class avoid answering, others instead play along, because increasing the interaction obviously helps the video to spread and therefore to be visible. “It’s my dream”, writes a man under a post. And an osteopath replies winkingly: “The visit or the girl?”. Some comments directly propose pornographic references: “I usually skip this part”. In the past, a video called “Let’s unblock Carlotta’s sacrum” went viral. A video that was so viewed that it started a trend: all the osteopaths started filming videos in which they “unblocked” the sacrum of some girl.

A phenomenon, that of the sexualization of osteopathy, which is also confirmed by the words that are suggested in the TikTok search bar (which, for the uninitiated, represent the most searched words on the topic, ed.): “female osteopathy”, “chiropractic on girls” and the like. Yes, because the trend is obviously widespread abroad too. The boundary between Asmr and sex has always been very thin: whispered words, soft atmospheres and soft gestures immediately induce a perception of enjoyment.

But medicine on TikTok is notoriously a (dangerous) trend

But we must break a lance in favor of osteopaths: they are not the only ones. In fact, there are many health professionals who advertise their activity on TikTok, often slipping into entertainment drifts typical of the platform. It is also clear that there are disciplines that work more and others less: it is obvious that if you talk to me about plasma, I can hold my attention less. In short, the preparation of professionals cannot be questioned for so little, but the spectacularization of everything is enough to make people turn up their noses. And after all, thinking about it, we have seen even worse. Just think of the TikTok doctors of the “first wave”, that is, those who did idiotic dances while talking about candida and psychotherapy, thus riding the themes of sexuality and mental health so dear to young users. Today, the worst, in this sense, are perhaps the nutrition experts: nutritionists, dieticians and dieticians who, in videos of a few minutes, claim to give sufficient nutritional advice to a particularly delicate segment of the public, that is, adolescence and twenty-year-olds, who often struggle with body shape. A very dangerous simplification.

Story of Maya, who could only eat live on TikTok. And who struggles with eating disorders

Searching TikTok for a Mental Health Diagnosis

A visit to a “star osteopath” that ended badly

But what matters in the end is reality. That’s what a professional’s credibility is based on. And if, by going to the star osteopath, he solves your problem, that’s what matters. The important thing, however, is not to find yourself like Elena, an acquaintance of mine, who after making an appointment with a famous osteopath on TikTok (none of those immortalized in the previous photos, ed.), then found herself assisted mostly by his collaborators, after hundreds of euros paid out and hours in the waiting room: meeting her idol was a privilege that lasted only the last few minutes of therapy. In the hours that followed, Elena left a fiery review under her profile: the osteopath apologized in many ways, even offering to give her back the money. Popularity is always a double-edged sword. And it often has a price to pay.